The Mormon Internet Package

I was arguing with an unpleasant Asian girl about the state of a room I was in.

girl: "This place is a terrible mess."

me: "I don't know if it's a terrible mess."

girl: "Oh, it's terrible."

me: "Look, I'm probably more anal about such things than you are in terms of defining when things are properly organized. But trust me, I've seen worse."

I picked up a pamphlet which was talking about the online service Freebase. Someone was saying that they'd used it to track their astrological chart, and done a lot of editing on the astrology articles. The later pages in the booklet were colorful illustrations telling the story of a monk who was consciously looking around him at the various potential "next moments in time", and only choosing the ones to visit that looked most appealing.

An iphone I was holding rang, and I answered it. It was from relatives asking about Keane's Album "Perfect Symmetry", and it was somehow important for them to have a copy.

me: "This place is a bit disorganized...it could take me a while to find the album, I don' t know where it would be. I can send it to you on the computer."

relative one: "How is that possible?"

me: "Just MP3s, they're on a server. I can send you a link and you can download and listen to them. I don't have your email address."

relative one: "Send it to setuptest.com."

relative two: "No... it's testsetup.com."

me: (frustrated) "You have to have something in front of that, a word and an 'at' sign. Like name@testsetup.com."

relative two: "Oh no, we don't need an 'at'. We got the special mormon package."

me: "That isn't going to work."

A bit of time passed somehow to where they were asking me a question later when they were looking at albums on my server.

relatives: "Is it the album with the skeleton on the cover?"

me: "Uh, no. What are you talking about? The cover is a bunch of colored triangles and things."

Looking at the server, I was surprised to see that where the album cover should have been there was a picture that looked a skeleton head.

Note

The skeleton looked a lot like "Achmed the Dead Terrorist", which is a puppet from a comedy act that I don't find remotely comical, yet which has somehow caught on big with the internet:

Keane's "official" album cover does have colored triangles and things:

Currently I am experimenting with using Disqus for comments, however it is configured that you don't have to log in or tie it to an account. Simply check the "I'd rather post as a guest" button after clicking in the spot to type in a name.

The accounts written here are as true as I can manage. While the
words are my own, they are not independent creative works of fiction
—in any intentional way. Thus I do not consider the material to
be protected by anything, other than that you'd have to be
crazy to want to try and use it for genuine purposes (much less
disingenuous ones!) But who's to say?